


Song of Sheherazade

by Callie



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: F/M, Implied Incest, implied dubious consent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-26
Updated: 2012-12-26
Packaged: 2017-11-22 11:56:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/609568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Callie/pseuds/Callie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Susan hates Tashbaan with the fire of a thousand suns – that's what it feels like here, all the time, a thousand suns beating down on the land and scorching it to a crisp, nothing at all like the cool woods and hills of Narnia. She imagines this is what it might feel like inside a furnace, with the dry sort of heat that sears your lungs from the inside out as soon as you step outdoors and take a breath. The clothes, the food, the view from outside her window – they're all wrong, and Susan hates every moment of her visit here.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Song of Sheherazade

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was originally written in 2007 and is now being posted here. It is set during the events of _The Horse and His Boy_ , when Susan and Edmund are visiting Calormen. The fic centers on Susan/Rabadash, but Susan/Peter is implied, in case that is a pairing that bothers you.

Susan hates Tashbaan with the fire of a thousand suns – that's what it feels like here, all the time, a thousand suns beating down on the land and scorching it to a crisp, nothing at all like the cool woods and hills of Narnia. She imagines this is what it might feel like inside a furnace, with the dry sort of heat that sears your lungs from the inside out as soon as you step outdoors and take a breath. The clothes, the food, the view from outside her window – they're all wrong, and Susan hates every moment of her visit here.

Susan hates Rabadash too. It took her a while to realise it, but when she does she knows she's hated him all along, more for who he isn't than for who he is. Everything about him is as wrong as everything about his awful country. She tries to ignore it, though, for even though he is a fool in the presence of his father – who Susan hates, too, and can't imagine living with him as her father-in-law, with his long and flowery phrases that say much and mean nothing – he speaks prettily enough to her when they're alone. He says the sorts of things that all men say, except he uses more words to say them and he's a little more skilled with his hands as he says it than most of the princes that come to court her. But his accent is all wrong, and the things he says don't make her feel _alive_ , the way she thinks they should. The sound of his voice is as abrasive as the sand that blows everywhere with the hot wind, and it makes her sick inside, thinking of what she wishes she could hear and who she wishes would say it.

Susan hates for him to touch her, despite the fact that he knows what he's doing. Rabadash's hands aren't a king's hands; they're too dark, too rough, and the wrong size. They're too different from hers, and they aren't what she wants to feel against her skin. She tries to close her eyes and pretend they're different hands, hands that are lighter, gentler, and more familiar, and for a little while it almost works. She can pretend for a little while, and almost believe it, until he whispers long and meaningless phrases in her ear, calling her his barbarian queen in humid breath that reeks of onions and spices and free-flowing Calormene wine, and she hates him even more than she did before for shattering her illusions. She doesn't stop him though, for if what she truly wants is forbidden to her, perhaps the opposite will break her of her wanting. 

Susan hates the gowns he has the slavegirls bring for her, wispy bits of silk that she would never dream of wearing at home, with golden collars crusted with jewels that brand her as much a slave as anything could. She doesn't wear them where any of the Narnians can see, of course. She doesn't think she could bear to see the looks on their faces if she did. The way Edmund looks at her is bad enough, when they sit down to breakfast and he asks her what she thinks she's playing at here. Susan can't tell him, of course – there is no way to make Edmund understand the ache in her heart, the fierce longing for someone she can never have and the need for what she does accept to be so completely different that will take it away. Perhaps she hates Edmund a little, too, for not understanding. There are things that men can never understand, and brothers even less. So she tells her brother she's doing her duty, building an alliance for Narnia and professing love which they both know is a lie, and perhaps part of her has even been fooled into believing it by now. 

Susan hates that part of her, the part that's been fooled even as she knows it to be false, because it's the part that keeps her quiet when Rabadash ruins her gown in his impatience and kisses her with skill he can't be bothered to employ. His hands aren't the ones she wants but she lets him touch her anyway, in all the places she's never let anyone touch before because no one could ever give her what it is she really wants, and she feels like she's giving away something that ought to be given to someone else, someone who giving it to would feel like giving it to a part of herself. His body is all wrong too, glistening with the strange perfumed oils the Calormenes rub into their skin against the sun and heat, but as wrong at it is, he manages to rouse her, though it's less due to his skill than to her imagination and her longing; he is only a substitute. He rouses her and it feels like a betrayal though it's less wrong than what she's betraying.

Susan hates the way he's finished almost before he's even started, leaving her disgusted and disappointed and angry. He falls into a satisfied sleep almost immediately; one dark hand curled possessively over her breast, and looking at him Susan thinks she's never felt so much hate in her life. She hasn't yet consented to marry him, and already he treats her as his possession. When he looks at her, she knows that even though he declares his wish that his father will live forever (as the Calormenes do) that he's already plotting his own rule, and what he will do with her when he does – to him she is an object to use and dispose of as he pleases. She knows he won't wake when she slips out of bed, for there was enough wine on his breath to make her drunk herself, so she leaves him lying there naked and ridiculous and goes back to her own chambers.

Susan hates the way she speaks to the slavegirls when she asks them to draw her a bath. It goes against everything in her gentle nature to speak to them the way they are accustomed, but when she gives them words of kindness they look suspicious and shrink back, and as disgusted as she feels with what she's allowed to happen it isn't hard to harden her tone. She dismisses them curtly to hide the emotion in her voice and shoves her ruined gown in to the brazier before scrubbing her skin until it glows pink and painful. Her nerves are on edge from what Rabadash began and failed to finish, and as she tries to wash his scent from her body she wishes it weren't her own hands on her skin. She imagines what it would be like if neither of them were as honourable as they were, if she would allow _him_ to be as dishonourable as she's just been, and it awakens something in her that Rabadash couldn't be bothered to find. It isn't Rabadash's name she whispers in the end when she crumples against the side of the bath, trembling and breathless, and it isn't Rabadash's face she sees when she finally falls into a restless sleep, but eyes as blue and lips as full and skin as fair as her own.

Susan hates the danger she's put them all in by coming here, and she hates that she's been the cause of it, but she loves Edmund and Tumnus fiercely the next morning for figuring a way out of it. She writes the invitation to the party on the _Splendour Hyaline_ with cold disdain, wording it very prettily but meaning none of it, and counts down the hours until they can sneak away from this hellish place for good. She hates herself for her own stupidity in coming here, and she knows that once she sets foot in Narnia again she will never, ever leave it as long as she lives. Because what she really wants is there and always has been, and she knows now that there can never be a substitute for where her heart lies.


End file.
